Bully Brutality

Often in media, The Bully is portrayed as a typical Jerkass who's biggest threat to their victim is a wedgie or fist in the face. Aside from that, they are mostly harmless in the grand scheme of things.Deadly Bullying takes the typical bully Up to Eleven by having him do things that could actually kill their victim, even though the bully doesn't actually want to commit murder. Where the typical bully just wants to give their victim a black eye, the deadly bully wants to beat them to a bloody pulp. The fact that the bully is capable of inflicting such harm is usually lampshaded by the characters. Other times, it becomes clear that these bullies have no limits.

Do not confuse this with cases where bullying has led to the victim committing suicide, that's just a specific case of Driven to Suicide. This trope is where the bullying itself has reached levels that the bully has committed manslaughter, or come close to it by landing the victim in hospital or leaving them permanently disabled.

Examples

In Elfen Lied, Lucy/Kaede's Precious Puppy was killed with a vase by Tomoo and his friends, the bullies who bullied her on a regular basis. They just wanted to see how she would react. She killed them with her Vectors.

In the original volume of Omega The Unknown, a nerdy student is beaten so badly by bullies that he must be rushed into the hospital for surgery. When he returns, a bully kicks him hard enough to rupture his stitches and he dies.

There's a story arc in The Sandman where at a Boarding School of Horrors, dozens of students return from the dead - including a trio of bullies who attended the school back before the First World War (for reference, this story took place during the Gulf War.)It turns out that these bullies killed one of their fellow students decades earlier as part of a Satanic ritual (and this unfortunate lad is also back from the dead.) Displeased with the way that the ritual failed to gain them any special attention from Satan, and generally unhappy about being back at their old school, they decide to resume being bullies and inflict their tortures on one of the few live students left at the school. The poor kid ends up dying from the wounds they inflict upon him after several agonizing days without medical care.

Biff Tannen from Back to the Future engages in this in the first movie, by using his car to try and run a skateboarding Marty into a manure truck.

Henry Bowers, the lead bully in IT, pulled a knife on one of the child protagonists and later on he and his posse chased the protagonists into the sewer (while they were confronting IT) in order to kill them all. This is pretty much standard for Stephen King.

In Young Adult, Mavis befriends Matt, a nerd who was so severely bullied in high school that he's now permanently disabled.

In Drillbit Taylor, the titular character is hired by the protagonists to protect them from two bullies who are actively trying to kill them.

Discussed in The Garbage Pail Kids Movie; Dodger gets bullied physically by Juice and his gang. When asked why he hasn't reported it to the police, Dodger explains that the last one who snitched on Juice got "poured" into the West Side highway.

In The Karate Kid, every one of the nasty karate students Daniel runs into (the Cobra Kai, Chozen) gives him sound beatings.

Inverted in Ender's Game - a bully attacks Ender, who responds by beating him to a bloody pulp, actually (if unintentionally) killing him. He gets away with it because the military recognizes it as a sign of his potential for measured brutality.

The bullies in Let the Right One In were pretty vicious. At one point a bully's older brother gets into the fray and literally attempts to drown the main character. Yeesh.

In The Saga of Tuck, the protagonist is beaten almost to the point of death at one point. More than one chapter focuses on his dubious chances of survival.

Rumer Godden's The Diddakoi, the eponymous girl is bullied repeatedly by the other girls at her school, which comes to a head when they physically assault her and leave her with a broken neck. Thankfully, she survives, but had he guardian not been there, it would have been fatal.

In Powers, the third book of Annals of the Western Shore, Hoby's torment of protagonist Gavir comes to a head when he and his pack hold Gavir upside-down in a well. Not only is he nearly drowned, he's badly bruised and battered, and their owners finally send Hoby away.

In The Soldier Son series, there is a tradition of hazing new recruits at the military academy. The sons of the new nobles were subjected to far worse hazing than the old nobility, to the point that several of them were discharged for health reasons afterwards.

In Stephen King's short story The Body, the four protagonists all receive beatings from Ace and his gang; one gets a broken nose and fingers and another one has a badly broken arm.

Inverted in a CSI episode actually called "Bully For You" - the bully, Barry Schickel, is the Asshole Victim there. It turns out the murderer is the school counselor.

Freaks and Geeks used this with a bully who landed a kid in the hospital by using peanuts, which the kid was allergic to.

In Grange Hill, "Booga" Benson was expelled after the beating he gave Tucker landed Tucker in the hospital.

One Midsomer Murders episode has a kid with a Disappeared Dad want to join the local gang of bullies and dies accidentally, though it looks like a suicide, causing his mother to die soon after (he was supposed to stay on a chair in a noose and slipped off). Years later, one of the murderers thinks he's going to die and confesses to the priest... who happened to be the kid's father.

In another, a child is left for dead by the bullies, and is found amnesiac by a couple who'd recently lost their child. They end up keeping him in their basement for years (not out of abuse, but so that he wouldn't be taken away from them).

An episode of The George Lopez Show has Carmen play a prank on Max by photographing him with a teddy bear while he's sleeping. It goes horribly wrong when Max ends up getting stitches in the back of his head from the bullying that ensues.

On Graceland, Carlito Solano is an overgrown bully of the Psychopathic Manchild variety. In his first appearance, he shoots one of his own bodyguards in order to test an antique pistol, and the poor bastard only survives because Johnny intervenes and prevents him from bleeding out. In another, he nearly chokes his own sister to death.

Walker, Texas Ranger has an inversion in one episode, where one particular kid is picked on by almost all of the other students, for being smaller than they are, for wearing ratty clothing, for being "stinky", for his Hispanic accent, among other reasons. Eventually, the boy makes it to the roof of the school, and intends to jump to his death, but Walker arrives on the scene, and proceeds to try and talk him out of it; the boy appears to change his mind, only to accidentally slip and fall to his death anyway. Walker immediately starts an anti-bullying campaign, not just at the school, but in the entire community, in the wake of the boy's untimely death.

In Halt and Catch Fire, Joe's initial explanation for his scars was that he was chased off of a roof by bullies, however, Cameron later figures out that this is a lie.

In the season finale of Necessary Roughness, T.K.'s career is effectively ended when Coach Wizinski enlists some of his former teammates to utterly wreck his shoulder to "punish" him for defecting from the Hawks.

Video Games

In the Mystery Case Files game Shadow Lake, a tough-looking girl follows the boy who found the artifact up to the school's bell tower, and tries to bully him into handing it over. In the struggle, he's knocked over the railing and falls to his death.

In Tiny and Big: Grandpa's Leftovers, Big starts off as just a bully who steals Tiny's treasured underpants. However, said pair of underpants turn out to be a magical artifact that slowly turns Big into an Omnicidal Maniac, and by the end of the game, he's so hell-bent on outright killing Tiny that he's hurling whole brick walls at him.

In Yume Miru Kusuri, Aeka Shiraki is being continuously harshly bullied to the point of breaking, and everyone turns a blind eye. The bad end of her arc is past that point and has her jump off the school roof in a suicide attempt. Good end? That one has herself and supportive-of-her protagonist quit the crapsack school after having snapped, that is having retaliated at escalative bullies once, near-strangling the instigator to death among other things.

Western Animation

As revealed in the episode "Skips' Story" of Regular Show, Klorgbane the Destroyer was an excessive bully in high school whose bullying often went under the radar of Headmaster Bennett. Klorgbane crosses the Moral Event Horizon however when he causes the death of Desdemona, the love of Skips' life and reason for his constant skipping and name.

In one episode of Robotboy, Donnie attempted to throw Tommy in a woodchipper.

Played for Laughs in an episode of The Simpsons. Lisa gets a crush on bully Nelson, and makes Milhouse pass him a note on her behalf. "Guess who likes you?" Nelson takes a look at Milhouse, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. Cut to Milhouse being taken away in an ambulance.

Inverted in Enders Game - a bully attacks Ender, who responds by beating him to a bloody pulp, actually (if unintentionally) killing him. He gets away with it because the military recognizes it as a sign of his potential for measured brutality.

In Boys Before Flower, in the first episode, the F4 is shown to have driven a boy to suicide which the main girl prevents. It also shows the other students filming the suicide with the guy standing at the edge of the building (which the main character prevents but whatever) and no one seemed bothered by it. It is also a case of Apathetic Citizens but whatever.

The first Ender's Game example is a straight inversion - he accidentally kills Stilson in response to the bullying.

The (Second) Ender's Game example is far more complex than that...Bonzo fully intended to beat Ender to a bloody pulp. Ender wasn't prosecuted (at the time) for the listed reason, the fact that it was clear self-defense, AND that the "adults" who should have stopped it were intentionally staying away.

Biff in Back To The Future does this in nearly every film:
Part 1: 50's Biff tries to run skateboarding Marty into the manure truck.
Part 2: 50's Biff, Hoverboard Biff, and Evil Alternate Future Biff all try to kill Marty using guns, cars, etc.
Part 3: Cowboy Biff actually shoots Marty in the chest after trying to lynch him.

Recent SVU episode: A 8.5-months pregnant teen girl hangs herself after being cyber-bullied by, well, her entire school - all because her boyfriend left his homecoming queen/cheerleader/bitch gf to date the bullied one.

One Midsomer Murders episode has a kid with a Disappeared Dad want to join the local gang of bullies and dies accidentally, though it looks like a suicide, causing his mother to die soon after (he was supposed to stay on a chair in a noose and slipped off). Years later, one of the murderers thinks he's going to die and confesses to the priest... who happened to be the kid's father.

In another, a child is left for dead by the bullies, and is found amnesiac by a couple who'd recently lost their child. They end up keeping him in their basement for years (not out of abuse, but so that he wouldn't be taken away from them).

I think the description should be amended to remove the mention of Complete Monster. Its going to be hard enough keeping people from mentioning it without reminding people of its existence, too many editors will have a "reason" why they think their example is one of those "rare" exceptions which justifies mention.

The Diddakoi has the eponymous girl repeatedly bullied by the other girls at her school, which comes to a head when they physically assault her and leave her with a broken neck. Thankfully, she survives.

As revealed in the episode "Skips' Story" of Regular Show, Klorgbane the Destroyer was an excessive bully in highschool whose bullying often went under the radar of Headmaster Bennett. Klorgbane crosses the Moral Event Horizon however when he causes the death of Desdemona, the love of Skips' life and reason for his constant skipping and name.

YMMV, but it's pretty much a standard Stephen King trope. Any bully that appears on his stories is a borderline Complete Monster that is gonna try to kill you or ruin your chances of surviving whatever threat the story is tossing at you For The Evulz. The IT example up there is a good one (attempted murder and mutilation, on top of being a Politically Incorrect Villain).

Walker Texas Ranger. An inversion in one episode, where one particular kid is picked on by almost all of the other students, for being smaller than they are, for wearing ratty clothing, for being "stinky", for his Hispanic accent, among other reasons. Eventually, the boy makes it to the roof of the school, and intends to jump to his death, but Walker arrives on the scene, and proceeds to try and talk him out of it; the boy appears to change his mind, only to accidentally slip and fall to his death anyway. Walker immediately starts an anti-bullying campaign, not just at the school, but in the entire community, in the wake of the boy's untimely death.

An episode of The George Lopez Show has Carmen play a prank on Max by photographing him with a teddy bear while he's sleeping. It goes horribly wrong when Max ends up getting stitches in the back of his head from the bullying that ensued.

Right, I'm taking over this YKTTW since I kinda want it to get all these examples up. Or at least most of them, since I've also altered the description to try and make sure that we distinguish between thise trope (the bully commits manslaughter) and a specific kind of Driven To Suicide, if that's okay. That's what I think this trope is, where the bully has hurt the victim physically enough to the point of killing them, or coming very close. So, any example where the victim of the death is actually Driven To Suicide is not an example. This isn't a subtrope.

Also, everyone who gives an example, please tell me the medium as well? Not all of us know whether the show you watch is cartoon, anime, live action, whatever.

I'd already removed it as part of my big example-adding edit, because I agree with you. I'm of the opinion that all bullies are complete monsters, but no bully, not even ones that fit this trope, actually meets the criteria.

What this really needs is a launch, but I need the opinions of more people to see if it's complete enough for a launch and a giving of the ol' Wiki Magic.

Discussed in The Garbage Pail Kids Movie; Dodger gets bullied physically by Juice and his gang. When asked why he hasn't reported it to the police, Dodger explains that the last one who snitched on Juice got "poured" into the West Side highway.

In the Mystery Case Files game Shadow Lake, a tough-looking girl follows the boy who found the artifact up to the school's bell tower, and tries to bully him into handing it over. In the struggle, he's knocked over the railing and falls to his death.

Issues... I would say that if the description includes "disablement/hospital stay" as an outcome of the bullying, it's not quite deadly. "Deadly" falls within the same vein as "Lethal/Fatal". This is more like "Injurious". I suppose you could call it "Near-Fatal" but that would seem to more or less rule out the causing of death. Maybe something like "Bloody Bullying" or "Bullied Bloody" or "Critical Condition Bullying" something.

The trope is perfect, but just one question... shouldn't we also add also examples where psychological bullying drives a person to the hospital or the morgue? (Being honest, yeah, most psych bullying ends up with being Driven To Suicide, but I can swear to you that I have seen one or two examples where the person reacting to the psychological bullying ended up in an accident that wouldn't have happened if said reaction hadn't distracted them. I just cannot for the life of me remember any specific examples right now)

In The Soldier Son series, there is a tradition of hazing new recruits at the military academy. The sons of the new nobles were subjected to far worse hazing than the old nobility, to the point that several of them were discharged for health reasons afterwards.

In The Shawshank Redemption, the incessant whining of the newly arrived prisoner known only as "Fatass" leads Captain Hadley, the brutal guard, to give him a merciless beating. The next day the prisoners learn that Fatass died in the infirmary.

There's a story arc in one of the Sandman graphic novels where at a Boarding School Of Horrors, the resident bullies drive a victim to Death. Death, in her sympathetic way, then tells the victim he's doomed to haunt the school for the rest of his Afterlife. And when the bullies die in their turn, they also end up as ghosts haunting the school... their victim discovers that not even death is an escape.

Subverted on Halt And Catch Fire when Joe tells Gordon and Cameron that when he was a kid some bullies chased him off the roof of a three-story building. He fell onto a metal fence and was impaled by the spikes. He spent a long time in the hospital and has scars all over his body. However, Cameron ends up Spotting The Thread and Joe admits that the story did not happen that way. Since Joe is a Consummate Liar we do not know which version of events is true or whether Joe was actually bullied as a child.

In Tiny And Big: Grandpa's Leftovers, Big starts off as just a bully who steals Tiny's treasured underpants. However, said pair of underpants turn out to be a magical artifact that slowly turns Big into an Omnicidal Maniac, and by the end of the game, he's so hellbent on outright killing Tiny that he's hurling whole brick walls at him.

In the original volume of Omega The Unknown, a nerdy student is beaten so badly by bullies that he must be rushed into the hospital for surgery. When he returns, a bully kicks him hard enough to rupture his stitches and he dies.

In Powers, the third book of Annals Of The Western Shore, Hoby's torment of protagonist Gavir comes to a head when he and his pack hold Gavir upside-down in a well. Not only is he nearly drowned, he's badly bruised and battered, and their owners finally send Hoby away.

Played For Laughs in an episode of The Simpsons. Lisa gets a crush on bully Nelson, and makes Milhouse pass him a note on her behalf. "Guess who likes you?" Nelson takes a look at Milhouse, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. Cut to Milhouse being taken away in an ambulance.

In Elfen Lied, Lucy/Kaede's Precious Puppy was killed with a vase by Tomoo and his friends, the bullies who bullied her on a regular basis. They just wanted to see how she would react. She killed them with her Vectors.

In The Goonies, a highschool bully drives up next to Brandon who is riding a little girl's bike (long story), grabs his hand, and attempts to drag him along sending him over a cliff. Somehow he survives.

Thinking a bit of a couple of potential examples that ended up not really fitting, I think that maybe we could have a trope for people that are driven into murder because they were bullied immediately before (like for example, Carrie White going snap because of the pig's blood)?

Accidental, deliberate, whatever-thing is that they were bullied, tried to pull of a Whos Laughing Now, and the thing went Horribly Wrong or Horribly Right and took someone else's life (or the bully's, when they didn't wanted to).

In Yume Miru Kusuri, Aeka Shiraki is being continuously harshly bullied to the point of breaking, and everyone turns a blind eye. The bad end of her arc is past that point and has her jump off the school roof in a suicide attempt. Good end? That one has herself and supportive-of-her protagonist quit the crapsack school after having snapped, that is having retaliated at escalative bullies once, near-strangling the instigator to death among other things.

Y'know, I stopped checking back after taking over thanks to there apparently being little interest. Why is it that every single time there's activity on something I've stopped looking at due to inactivity? *headdesk*

A quick check of on-page examples shows that I think I need to remind you that, if the bully is actually trying to kill the victim, then it's not this trope. If the bully wants the victim dead, then they're trying to commit murder, while this is about manslaughter or coming close. Intent to actually kill disqualifies.

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